Before I Go to Sleep (45 page)

‘After that I used to go to the café almost every day. It’s always easier to do something when you’ve done it once. Sometimes I’d wait for you to arrive, or make sure you were there before I went in, but sometimes I’d just go in anyway. And you noticed me. I know you did. You began to say hello to me, or you’d comment on the weather. And then one time I was held up, and when I arrived you actually said, “You’re late today!” as I walked past holding my tea and my flapjack, and when you saw that there were no free tables you said, “Why don’t you sit here?” and you pointed to the chair at your table, opposite you. The baby wasn’t there that day, so I said, “Are you sure you don’t mind? I won’t disturb you?” and then I felt bad for saying that, and I dreaded you saying that, yes, actually, on second thoughts it would disturb you. But you didn’t, you said, “No! Not at all! To be honest, it’s not going too well anyway. I’d be glad of a distraction!” and that was how I knew that you wanted me to speak to you, rather than just have my drink and eat my cake in silence. Do you remember?’

I shake my head. I have decided to let him speak. I want to find out everything he has to say.

‘So I sat, and we chatted. You told me you were a writer. You said you’d had a book published but you were struggling with your second one. I asked what it was about, but you wouldn’t tell me. “It’s fiction,” you said, and then you said, “supposedly”, and you suddenly looked very sad, so I offered to buy you another cup of coffee. You said that would be nice, but that you didn’t have any money with you to buy me one. “I don’t bring my purse when I come here,” you said. “I just bring enough money to buy one drink and one snack. That way I’m not tempted to pig out!” I thought it was an odd thing to say. You didn’t look as though you needed to worry about how much you ate at all. You were always so slim. But anyway I was glad, as it meant you must be enjoying speaking to me, and you would owe me a drink, so we’d have to see each other again. I said that it didn’t matter about the money, or buying me one back, and I got us some more tea and coffee. After that we started to meet quite regularly.’

I begin to see it all. Though I have no memory, somehow I know how these things work. The casual meeting, the exchange of a drink. The appeal of talking to – confiding in – a stranger, one who doesn’t judge or take sides because he can’t. The gradual acceptance into confidence, leading … to what?

I have seen the photographs of the two of us, taken years ago. We look happy. It is obvious where those confidences led us. He was attractive, too. Not film-star handsome, but better-looking than most; it is not difficult to see what drew me. At some point I must have started scanning the door anxiously as I sat trying to work, thinking more carefully about what clothes I would wear when I went to the café, whether to add a dash of perfume. And, one day, one or the other of us must have suggested we go for a walk, or to a bar, or maybe even to catch a film, and our friendship slipped over a line, into something else, something infinitely more dangerous.

I close my eyes and try to imagine it, and as I do I begin to remember. The two of us, in bed, naked. Semen drying on my stomach, in my hair, me turning to him as he begins to laugh and kiss me again. ‘Mike!’ I am saying. ‘Stop it! You have to leave soon. Ben’s back later today and I have to pick Adam up. Stop it!’ But he doesn’t listen. Instead he leans in, his moustachioed face in mine, and we are kissing again, forgetting about everything, about my husband, about my child. With a sickening plunge I realize that a memory of this day has come to me before. That day, as I had stood in the kitchen of the house I once shared with my husband I had not been remembering my husband, but my lover. The man I was fucking while my husband was at work. That’s why he had to leave that day. Not just to catch a train – because the man I was married to would be returning home.

I open my eyes. I am back in the hotel room and he is still crouching in front of me.

‘Mike,’ I say. ‘Your name is Mike.’

‘You remember!’ he says. He is pleased. ‘Chris! You remember!’

Hate bubbles up in me. ‘I remember your name,’ I say. ‘Nothing else. Just your name.’

‘You don’t remember how much in love we were?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I could ever have loved you, or surely I would remember more.’

I say it to hurt him, but his reaction surprises me. ‘You don’t remember Ben, though, do you? You can’t have loved him. And not Adam, either.’

‘You’re sick,’ I say. ‘How fucking dare you! Of course I loved him. He was my son!’

‘Is. Is your son. But you wouldn’t recognize him if he walked in now, would you? You think that’s love? And where is he? And where is Ben? They walked out on you, Christine. Both of them. I’m the only one who never stopped loving you. Not even when you left me.’

It is then that it hits me, finally, properly. How else could he have known about this room, about so much of my past?

‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘It was you! It was you who did this to me! You who attacked me!’

He moves over to me then. He wraps his arms around me, as if to embrace me, and begins to stroke my hair. ‘Christine darling,’ he murmurs, ‘don’t say that. Don’t think about it. It’ll just upset you.’

I try to push him off me, but he is strong. He squeezes me tighter.

‘Let me go!’ I say. ‘Please, let me go!’ My words are lost in the folds of his shirt.

‘My love,’ he says. He has begun to rock me, as if soothing a baby. ‘My love. My sweet, my darling. You should never have left me. Don’t you see? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t gone.’

Memory comes again.
We are sitting in a car, at night. I am crying, and he is staring out of the window, utterly silent. ‘Say something,’ I am saying. ‘Anything. Mike?
’

‘
You don’t mean it,’ he says. ‘You can’t
.’

‘
I’m sorry. I love Ben. We have our problems, yes, but I love him. He’s the person I am meant to be with. I’m sorry
.’

I am aware that I am trying to keep things simple, so that he will understand. I have come to realize, over the past few months with Mike, that it is better this way. Complicated things confuse him. He likes order. Routine. Things mixing in precise ratios with predictable results. Plus I don’t want to get too mired in details
.

‘
It’s because I came round to your house, isn’t it? I’m sorry, Chris. I won’t do that again, I promise. I just wanted to see you, and I wanted to explain to your husband
—’

I interrupt him. ‘Ben. You can say his name. It’s Ben
.’

‘
Ben,’ he says, as if trying the word for the first time and finding it unpleasant. ‘I wanted to explain things to him. I wanted to tell him the truth
.’

‘
What truth?
’

‘
That you don’t love him any more. That you love me, now. That you want to be with me. That was all I was going to say
.’

I sigh. ‘Don’t you see that, even if it were true – which it isn’t – it’s not you who should be saying that to him? It’s me. You had no right to just turn up at the house
.’

As I speak I think about what a lucky escape I have had
.

Ben was in the shower, Adam playing in the dining room, and I was able to persuade Mike that he ought to go home before either of them were aware of his presence. That was the night I decided I had to end the affair
.

‘
I have to go now,’ I say. I open the car door, step out on to the gravel. ‘I’m sorry
.’

He leans across to look at me. I think how attractive he is, that if he had been less damaged my marriage might have been in real trouble. ‘Will I see you again?’ he says
.

‘
No,’ I reply. ‘No. It’s over
.’

Yet here we are now, all these years later. He is holding me again, and I understand that, no matter how scared I was of him, I was not scared enough. I begin to scream.

‘Darling,’ he says. ‘Calm down.’ He puts his hand over my mouth and I scream louder. ‘Calm down! Someone will hear you!’ My head smacks backwards, connects with the radiator behind me. There is no change in the music from the club next door – if anything it is louder now.
They won’t
, I think. They will never hear me. I scream again.

‘Stop it!’ he says. He has hit me, I think, or else shaken me. I begin to panic. ‘Stop it!’ My head hits the warm metal again and I am stunned into silence. I begin to sob.

‘Let me go,’ I say, pleading with him. ‘Please—’ He relaxes his grip a little, though not enough for me to wriggle free. ‘How did you find me? All these years later? How did you find me?’

‘Find you?’ he says. ‘I never lost you.’ My mind whirrs, uncomprehending. ‘I watched over you. Always. I protected you.’

‘You visited me? In those places? The hospital, Waring House?’ I begin. ‘But—’

He sighs. ‘Not always. They wouldn’t have let me. But I would sometimes tell them I was there to see someone else, or that I was a volunteer. Just so that I could see you, and make sure you were all right. At that last place it was easier. All those windows …’

I go cold. ‘You watched me?’

‘I had to know you were all right, Chris. I had to protect you.’

‘So you came back for me? Is that it? Wasn’t what you did here, in this room, enough?’

‘When I found out that bastard had left you, I couldn’t just leave you in that place. I knew you’d want to be with me. I knew it was the best thing for you. I had to wait for a while, wait until I knew there was no one still there to try and stop me, but who else would have looked after you?’

‘And they just let me go with you?’ I say. ‘Surely they wouldn’t have let me go with a stranger!’

I wonder what lies he must have told for them to let him take me, then remember reading what Dr Nash had told me about the woman from Waring House.
She was so happy when she found out you’d gone back to live with Ben
. An image forms, a memory. My hand in Mike’s as he signs a form. A woman behind a desk smiles at me. ‘We’ll miss you, Christine,’ she says. ‘But you’ll be happy at home.’ She looks at Mike. ‘With your husband.’

I follow her gaze. I don’t recognize the man whose hand I am holding, but I know he is the man I married. He must be. He has told me he is.

‘Oh my God!’ I say now. ‘How long have you been pretending to be Ben?’

He looks surprised. ‘Pretending?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Pretending to be my husband.’

He looks confused. I wonder if he has forgotten that he is not Ben. Then his face falls. He looks upset.

‘Do you think I wanted to do that? I had to. It was the only way.’

His arms relax, slightly, and an odd thing happens. My mind stops spinning, and, although I remain terrified, I am infused with a bizarre sense of complete calm. A thought comes from nowhere.
I will beat him. I will get away. I have to
.

‘Mike?’ I say. ‘I do understand, you know. It must have been difficult.’

He looks up at me. ‘You do?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m grateful to you for coming for me. For giving me a home. For looking after me.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Just think where I’d be if you hadn’t. I couldn’t bear it.’ I sense him soften. The pressure on my arms and shoulder lessens and is accompanied by a subtle yet definite sensation of stroking that I find almost more distasteful but I know is more likely to lead to my escape. Because escape is all I can think of. I need to get away. How stupid of me, I think now, to have sat there on the floor while he was in the bathroom to read what he had stolen of my journal. Why hadn’t I taken it with me and left? Then I remember that it was not until I read the end of the journal that I had any real idea of how much danger I was in. That same small voice comes in again.
I will escape. I have a son I cannot remember having met. I will escape
. I move my head to face him, and begin to stroke the back of his hand where it rests on my shoulder.

‘Why not let me go, and then we can talk about what we should do?’

‘How about Claire, though?’ he says. ‘She knows I’m not Ben. You told her.’

‘She won’t remember that,’ I say, desperately.

He laughs, a hollow, choked sound. ‘You always treated me like I was stupid. I’m not, you know. I know what’s going to happen! You told her. You ruined everything!’

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I can call her. I can tell her I was confused. That I’d forgotten who you were. I can tell her that I thought you were Ben, but I was wrong.’

I almost believe he thinks this is possible, but then he says, ‘She’d never believe you.’

‘She would,’ I say, even though I know that she would not. ‘I promise.’

‘Why did you have to go and call her?’ His face clouds with anger, his hands begin to grip me tighter. ‘Why? Why, Chris? We were doing fine until then. Fine.’ He begins to shake me again. ‘Why?’ he shouts. ‘Why?’